Darkfever

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

Fever #1

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman.

Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae...

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands...

MacKayla, also known as Mac, starts out as just a typical blonde 22 year old in this book. She's flighty and a little shallow, and loves the color pink, her only worry in the world is what she wants to wear that day. Everything changes when she gets the worst phone call of her life, the one that tells her that her sister, Alina, has been brutally murdered in Dublin. When she finds out the police have stopped investigating Alina's death, Mac sets out to find the killer herself. She quickly gets in way over her head when she runs into the mysterious Barrons and finds out she can see the Fae, a very rare talent. The Fae do not like to be seen, so Mac must learn everything she can from Barrons quickly if she is to have any hope of survival.

While she still has a ways to go, Mac did come a long way towards growing up and character growth. She was raised in a very sheltered life, and when she is thrown into this "new" one, it really showed. However, after much protesting, she finally started to realize that she couldn't just hide her head in the sand anymore. She is very important to the fate of humanity. I think with some time she will truly become a force to be reckoned with. Even at her most flightiness in the beginning, some of her inner strength showed considering only someone with a solid constitution would be able to fly across the ocean to a strange country to track down a murderer. Yes, this idea is a little foolish, but requires strength none the less.

I loved Jericho Barren's character. He is a gruff, opinionated, very masculine character. He does everything he can to get rid of Mac in the beginning, but when she gets too deep he takes her under his wing. He insists its not for altruist purposes, that he only is helping her because she can be of use to him. However, every so often he shows a slight softness under that gruff armor. I have a feeling a love interest is brewing between the two. I think the two would work well as they would balance each other out, with Mac softening him, and he would toughen her up some.

This book was really good, while mostly a world building book as it did take a while for anything to really happen. However, I didn't mind the initial slowness of the book, as Mac really needed things thrown at her slowly to give her a chance to grow up a little each time. It ended on a cliff hanger, while frustrating, makes me very eager to read the next installment. This book was a little dark, with no real romance, but there seems to be a definite potential in the future for that. It is a very good first installment in a series, and I cannot wait to see what more is in store for Mac.

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Darkfever (Fever Series, Book 1)